The Aurora Cultural Centre, in collaboration with Aurora Public Library, presents the inaugural IFOA Aurora event, featuring Gwen Benaway. Gwen will talk about and read from her new poetry collection, Passage. Moderated by Brock Weir, editor of The Auroran, Gwen will welcomes questions from the audience after the reading.

Books available for purchase on site this evening from Blue Heron Books, Uxbridge.

About Passage

‘Traveling to Northern Ontario and across the Great Lakes, Passage is a poetic voyage through divorce, family violence, legacy of colonization, and the affirmation of a new sexuality and gender.’

Gwen Benaway is of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published two collections of poetry, Ceremonies for the Dead and Passage, and her third collection, What I Want is Not What I Hope For, is forthcoming from BookThug in 2018. A Two-Spirited Trans poet, she has been described as the spiritual love child of Tomson Highway and Anne Sexton. In 2015, she was the recipient of the inaugural Speaker’s Award for a Young Author and in 2016 she received a Dayne Ogilvie Honour of Distinction for Emerging Queer Authors from the Writer’s Trust of Canada.

Tickets are free, and available in advance at the Aurora Cultural Centre, 22 Church Street, and Aurora Public Library. Limited seating; please plan to pick up tickets before the event. Light refreshments served.